


i'll hold your hands, they're just like ice

by johnny-and-dora (sian_jpg)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Married Couple, One-Shot, Snow Day, but it's christmas so i can get away with it, this might be the most plotless fluff i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 08:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17138627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian_jpg/pseuds/johnny-and-dora
Summary: “I was thinking about...our kids. Our future kids, I mean.” He says, still determinedly fixated on the window, and Amy feels herself completely melt."or, the one where jake & amy have a snow day.(festive fluff)





	i'll hold your hands, they're just like ice

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas/happy holidays/happy random day in december to you all! <3

There’s a certain way that Amy Santiago expects to wake up on a Tuesday morning in late December.

It involves her eyes gently flitting open to the tuneful, familiar vibrato of her trusty alarm clock at 7am . It involves slowly unfurling herself from her cocoon of blankets, skimming through the news on her phone, scrolling through the comments on her laminating blog.

For the past four years, it’s also slowly come to involve the love of her life sprawled next to her - usually finding increasingly creative ways to enable the snooze on Amy’s many, many alarms and trying his hardest to tempt her back to bed for five more minutes.

(She can roll her eyes all she wants, but she can’t deny that Jake’s methods usually prove very effective before she can finally lure him up with a forehead kiss and the promise of coffee.)

The almost sub-zero temperatures – and, of course, the always warm hands and soft puppy-dog brown eyes of her husband – never fail to make sticking to her perfected December routine a reasonably difficult task to fulfil. But Amy loves her schedule _almost_ as much as she loves Jake Peralta, and so it’s a routine that she rarely breaks, even when everything outside of the comfort of their bed feels like some kind of barren icy hellscape.

So it’s a surprise, then, when she’s woken up on a Tuesday morning in late December by the unmistakable sound of chaos coming from the kitchen, a picturesque pale sunrise framed by the windows that tells her it’s far too late to be 7am, and an empty space next to her where Jake should be.

Amy can’t lie; for one, hideous, jarring second, she panics. Still disorientated by sleep, she can feel horribly familiar dread rising in her throat at the horribly familiar emptiness of his side of the bed – but then she feels the body warmth still radiating from the sheets, and her ears tune to his voice belting Mariah Carey in the next room, and she relaxes. She chides herself for falling into old habits so easily, grateful that they’re merely old habits now.

Her rings glint on the bedside table – a promise of forever she’s more thankful for than most - and she quietly slips them on, smiling softly as she wraps up in a makeshift blanket cape and makes her way towards the kitchen.

Jake’s not going anywhere, and neither is she.

She leans in the doorway, instantly feeling lighter at the spectacular sight of her husband, dressed in pyjamas and a bright red Santa hat, fully engrossed in singing along to cheesy Christmas songs with intense passion while he makes pancakes and coffee. She isn’t completely sure she isn’t still dreaming.

Amy fondly watches him for a minute, unnoticed, weighing up the entertainment value of scaring the shit out of him against using him as her personal space heater– she eventually goes with the latter, draping her arms around his waist in lieu of a greeting. Melting into him from behind as she rests her chin on his shoulder, she feels his laugh vibrate through the both of them and immediately feels a hundred times warmer.

“Hey, babe. Enjoy your lie in?”

“Mmph. You’re warm.”

He turns around and she cups his face with her hands, tilting her head up to kiss him.

When they break apart, he smiles at her in _that_ stupid fond way; and she can’t help it. She forgets about how cold it is and forgets her anxiety about work and being late and pretty much everything else in the universe except his stupid face, because it’s stupid and adorable and she could probably spend all day kissing it if she could.

He takes her hands in his; interlacing their fingers and trying not to grimace at how freezing she inevitably is.

“You are...so cold. How are you always so cold? Are you a reptile? Have I married into some kind of secret underground lizard mafia? Are you going to drain my blood and steal my heat?” Amy rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Jake. You got me. I’m only here because I want to steal your heat.” She says, deadpan, and Jake waves a triumphant finger like he’s just solved a case.

“I knew it! I’m the best detective.” He squeezes her hands fondly before letting them go to return to the stove. She pours freshly made coffee into two mugs and takes a sip from one, leaning back against the counter and watching Jake work, humming along to the radio.

“I’d ask if you wanted to help me with these but I presume you want our kitchen to remain not on fire.”

“Ha ha.” They stay like that for a few minutes, Amy stifling laughter as he overdramatically flips the pancakes in sync to the music - but now that she’s less frozen and can actually focus, a glance at the clock creeps uneasiness at the break in her routine back into her system.

“Wait, aren’t we...super late for work? Our shift started an hour ago.”

She tries and miserably fails to sound nonchalant at the idea of not being punctual - Jake turns around to raise an eyebrow at her and she makes a face at him. Childish distracting marriage it is.

“...Have you not looked outside since you woke up?”

“No...” Amy tugs her blanket cape around her a little defensively and he smiles, gesturing to the kitchen window with his spatula like a wizard waving a wand. She makes her way over to the window, half-expecting to see some kind of post hurricane apocalypse devastation she somehow slept through...

...and instead it’s just the familiar view of the downtown Brooklyn apartment building across from theirs, perfectly intact – and buried by at least six inches of pure, white snow. Everywhere she looks is blanketed in white, like the entire city has been dusted with icing sugar. The entire scene looks like the backdrop of the Christmas card they got from her parents this year – it’s breathtaking.

She turns back to Jake with wonder glowing in her face, warming at the childlike glint in his eyes and his goofy, eager wide grin.

“Snow day!” He declares excitedly, plate of pancakes in each hand, and Amy can’t help but smile.

“It’s beautiful.”

“I know – and even better, city stopping. Holt sent a text telling us not to bother coming in an hour ago –the night shift are covering us seeing as we can’t get there and they can’t leave.”

“So?”  
“So, I woke up early, got way too excited at said snow, knew we weren’t going anywhere and shut off all your alarms so you could actually have a lie in.” He grins, and not even for the first time that morning she wonders how she got so lucky.

“I love you.”

“Love you too. The point is, everyone’s way too distracted by the snow for any crime to occur, which means we get a day off, which means –“ He hands her a plate – “celebratory snow day pancakes!”

Amy laughs and starts to eat, fondly watching from the window as the big family from the third floor that always send them a card run outside to pelt each other with snowballs. Jake puts one arm around her and she rests her head on his shoulder, blissfully content.

The snowball fight escalates after a few minutes, the kids engaged in an all out war with the parents even joining in, and Jake becomes immersed in it like it’s one of her mother’s favourite telenovelas.

At first she thinks he’s trying to figure out which kid to place a bet on winning (her money’s on the girl with the red scarf and the powerful throwing arm) but when she actually studies his expression it’s all wistful and dreamy, and she can tell he’s far away. She nudges him gently.

“What’re you thinking about?” Amy asks, half concerned and half curious. Their empty plates and coffee mugs are discarded on the kitchen counter, radio turned down to a quiet hum of vaguely festive themed white noise, both of them still fixated on the snow outside.

“Nothing.” He says, unconvincingly, and she has to remind herself not to use her interrogation room voice on her husband.

“You’re always thinking about something, Jake. Usually about fifty different things at once.” He exhales a short laugh at that, looking at her with such pure affection it almost sweeps her off her feet.

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s just...embarrassing. And sappy.”

“I like embarrassing and sappy.” She smiles, gently pushing him to open up – but he just shakes his head in response, gaze returning to the window where they both watch the dad pick one of his kids up and spin them round, laughing.

A few years ago she would have determinedly kept pushing further - but now Amy stays silent, the (fairly recent) luxury of knowing that he’ll open up sooner or later not lost on her. It only takes a minute before he speaks again.

“I was thinking about...our kids. Our future kids, I mean.” He says, still determinedly fixated on the window, and Amy feels herself completely melt.

“Oh.”  
“Yeah. Just...days like this, where we could go out and play in the snow...and they’d be wrapped up in like fifty different layers from head to toe, just like you, running around in cute little hats and scarves and coats...and we’d have snowball fights and build snowmen and then afterwards come inside and have hot cocoa and fall asleep watching cheesy Christmas movies on the sofa. I’d...I’d like that.”

“Yeah?” She prompts gently, her heart swelling at the picture now in her head. She’s thought about it too, of course, now more than ever – buying presents for her seemingly endless nephews and nieces, seeing Gina’s seemingly endless pictures of Iggy in adorable little jumpers and tiny bedazzled mittens, dodging her mom’s near constant invasive questions about grandchildren despite the six she has already.

She’s already far too excited for their first Christmas as a married couple, preparing for a few nights spent crammed into the usual cabin upstate with the whole family. It’s going to be complete chaos. She can’t wait.

“Yeah. Not right now, because I still like having you all to myself way too much...but soon. One day. I just...I really want...” He trails off but he doesn’t need to say any more – she hopes how she squeezes his hand is enough of an answer. They’ve talked about this a lot, even more so since getting married.

Not now, but _soon_. Not if, but _when._

“Me too.” Amy says, trying very hard not to spoil a perfect and romantic moment by crying at how much she loves her husband, burying her head deeper into the fabric of his sleeve so that he won’t notice. He kisses the top of her head and she can tell they’re both thinking about the same thing, warmth spreading through her whole body at the thought of soon sharing the holidays with kids of their own.

She could never picture having kids so easily until they’d been together for a while and she realised she just couldn’t have had them with anyone else. He’s always had a way of altering her life calendar in ways she couldn’t possibly expect, and she doesn’t think he’ll ever stop doing it.

Amy just hopes to God that they won’t inherit his eyes, because otherwise they’ll probably be able to get away with _anything._

Like getting to her to go out in the snow, for example – she’s basically resigned to her fate as soon as she sees Jake looking longingly as the picturesque winter painting outside their window.

“You want us to go out there, don’t you.” She says grimly, almost physically shivering in anticipation of how cold it is. He turns to look at her in mock offense, eyes glinting.  

“Amy Santiago-Peralta, don’t tell me we’re not going out in the snow. You love snow!”

“I love the idea of snow, in theory. In practise it’s cold and wet and gives you an excuse to throw things that are cold and wet at me.”

“...You also get to throw cold and wet things at me?” He offers as a tempting incentive, and she sighs, taking one last glance outside – even she has to admit, it looks beautiful out there.

“Fine.” She says, resignedly, and it’s almost worth it for the gleeful look on his face as he speeds out of the kitchen to get dressed. She pads out of the kitchen after him, glancing at their beautifully (and haphazardly, due to the chaotic nature of her husband’s artistic visions) decorated tree.

Suddenly, Amy can’t help imagining toys in bright colourful wrapping paper and bright twinkling fairy lights, the adorable pitter-patter of tiny excitable footsteps waking them up far too early on Christmas morning, leaving treats out for Santa, baking Christmas cookies together as a family. She smiles brightly, wondering when that picture got so vivid, wondering how soon that might become a reality.

Amy has a feeling that, very soon, maybe even this time next year, it’s going to get even harder to stick to her usual Tuesday morning in late December routine.

She can’t wait.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading - and thank you to everyone who's read any of my fics in 2018! i hope you have a very merry festive period and that 2019 is your best year yet <3
> 
> (special thank you to johanna @amyscascadingtabs for inspiring me with her incredible little festive fic series and just being lovely in general)  
> <3333


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